Currently, local or residential message-waiting notification is provided by a local carrier utilizing either audible or visual notifications. Audible notifications are generated by a switch provided by the local carrier, when a telephone receiver is removed from a telephone base. When a message is waiting for the customer, the switch applies the audible notification followed by dial tone to the telephone receiver, if the telephone receiver is “off-hook.” The audible notifications include stutter tone, which uses dial tone frequencies with a cadence of one-tenth of a second on, one-tenth of a second off, repeated ten times. Thus, if a customer has a message waiting, when she picks up the phone to make a call, she'll hear a series of tones that indicate an unheard voice message before she hears normal steady dial tone.
Similarly, a customer's handset that includes a LED (lamp) may blink when a new message is waiting. Textual data may also be provided to a telephone display. The visual notifications may be delivered to the telephone from the switch as a coded burst of data in American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) format. The customer receives the visual notification without placing the telephone in an off-hook condition. When a message is waiting for the customer, the ASCII data is sent to the telephone using Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) signaling to instruct the telephone to display text information or to illuminate the lamp. When no messages are available for the customer, the switch does not generate the visual or audible notifications.
Audible notifications may be tested remotely without customer interference, but testing visual notifications require a technician to be sent to the customer's location. When a message is waiting for a specified telephone, the audible notification may be tested remotely by allowing a technician to dial into a remote testing device, authenticating the technician at a remote testing device, selecting a port associated with the specified telephone and generating an “off-hook” condition. After the remote testing device generates the “off-hook” condition, the remote testing device receives the stutter tone indicating that a message is waiting and plays stutter tone to the technician.
On the other hand, remote testing for visual notification is intrusive to the customer. Either the technician calls the customer and asks whether the lamp or display is operational or the technician is required to visit the customer's location and perform a visual check of the lamp or display to decide whether the visual notifications are operating properly. This is inefficient and increases costs associated with providing visual notifications. Accordingly, there is a need to, among other things, be able to remotely confirm that visual message-waiting notifications are working as intended.